400 million European football fans eager to see 4turf® score a colourful winner
Love it or hate it, this is the summer of European football. It’s also the summer of 4turf®, a vital component of the mixtures used in most of the stadiums taking part in this year’s competition. You can’t miss 4turf®: it’s the lush green colour about to dominate a TV screen near you
2021-05-31
A summer of top-level European football is close at hand. Football fans across the continent are looking forward to a month of goals and drama set against the backdrop of lush green grass. When they switch on their TVs, fans will expect to see Europe’s leading players perform at their best, and the grass beneath their feet to look stunning. Fans and players want perfect pitches: healthy, lush, and uniformly green. The greener, the better.
Europe’s top groundsmen know this too. From now until the referee blows the whistle on the final game, their minds will be focused on one thing only: how to deliver the perfect experience of supreme playability and glorious colour. They are well aware that the eyes of 400 million fans will be on them, watching from their TVs, on their mobile phones and on large screens at countless sports bars across Europe.
Although groundsmen are used to the challenge of growing healthy, lush, and uniformly green grass, the pressures are greater when an entire continent is watching. In Baku, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, London and elsewhere, groundsmen will have been preparing for months. They know that there have been cases in the past during World Cup finals when officials have asked a stadium to change the type of grass on the pitch purely to look better on television.
Most European games to be played on 4turf®
The way to get that perfect green colour is to choose the right grass. Most of the European stadiums showing on TV screens this summer contain pitches that have been established or over-sown with mixtures containing 4turf® (turf tetraploid perennial ryegrass) varieties from DLF. There’s a good reason for this. On many of Europe’s official recommended lists, 4turf® varieties are among the top performers for disease-tolerance. The high disease-tolerance of 4turf® varieties and their ability to quickly outgrow some diseases are two of the reasons why they maintain such a desirably uniform green colour.
Our turf grass breeders have developed these perennial ryegrass varieties especially for sports pitches. Their characteristics – colour, high disease-tolerance, stress-tolerance and fast establishment – make them ideal components of mixtures destined for Europe’s top pitches. 4turf® varieties are fundamental to achieving the look that TV viewers expect.
Brilliant green colour for an entire continent
At DLF, we test our varieties at many locations across Europe. As a result, 4turf® exhibits a wide range of geographical adaptability, and scores high for colour at all sites and on all official lists. 4turf® varieties perform well across the continent from Baku in the east, to Amsterdam and Copenhagen in the west, to St. Petersburg in the north and to Budapest in the south. Everywhere where grass colour is a priority.
Better brown-patch tolerance
4turf® performs especially well against brown patch, a disease that would reduce the visual appeal of a top-level stadium. New results from a brown-patch tolerance screening involving diploid and tetraploid perennial ryegrass varieties inoculated with a European fungal strain, show that tetraploids are significantly more tolerant to brown patch than diploids. The screening took place in a state-of-the-art lab managed by people with years of experience in performing inoculation tests with Rhizoctonia. Their results confirm that tetraploid varieties are in general highly disease-tolerant.
For everyone with a stake in the greenness of a pitch – footballers, football fans, TV crews and groundsmen – 4turf® is the stress-tolerant, fast establishing and indispensable component of pitch mixtures for quick repairs and season-long playability. It’s the colour of our long-awaited summer of football.
Click here to find out more about 4turf® or to talk to your local DLF representative about grass, football and the fortunes of your team.